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An iconic photograph of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton using her BlackBerry while wearing sunglasses on a military plane in 2011 prompted a recordkeeping official in her office to inquire about whether Clinton had been assigned a State.gov email address, the State Department disclosed this week.Clarence Finney, who oversaw an office responsible for Freedom of Information Act searches, raised the question about an official account after seeing the photo in the media, according to testimony at a deposition held Wednesday and released Thursday. The image went viral on social media in 2012, prompting a "Texts from Hillary" meme."When Mrs. Clinton's...

Does integrity count anymore? It is a question worth asking. More importantly, it is a question worth answering. On Wednesday, retired General and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton made an astounding public remark. After having completed a spell-binding speech at Foothill College in Los Altos, Calif., as to the events of 9-11 and his 38 years serving in the United States military, Shelton was asked a question that brought a disquieting hush across the crowd. The Los Altos Town Crier newspaper put the events this way: "What do you think of Gen. Wesley Clark, and...

Miss Arkansas Savvy Shields won the Miss America pageant Sunday night in Atlantic City. She topped a field of 52 contestants to win the crown and the title of Miss America 2017, succeeding the outgoing Miss America Betty Cantrell. Shields performed a jazz dance to a song from the TV show "Smash," for which she won a preliminary competition earlier in the week. During the onstage interview portion of the competition, she was asked what she thought of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, one of several political questions asked of the contestants. "Both of the contestants have done a good...

The first ever openly lesbian Miss America contestant took the stage for the first time during the second night of the preliminary competition on Wednesday. Miss Missouri Erin O'Flaherty, 23, strutted her stuff during the swimsuit competition and spoke about National Suicide Prevention Week during her on stage question. Miss Maryland Hannah Brewer and Miss Arkansas Savvy Shields won the night's preliminary contests in the swimsuit and talent portion. Brewer won the swimsuit competition, while Shields nabbed the talent portion after jazz dancing to They Just Keep Moving The Line, a song from former NBC show Smash. 'We were just...

Miss Missouri, Erin O’ Flaherty, will compete for the Miss America crown this weekend as the first openly lesbian contestant.

Missouri has its first openly gay Miss Missouri, and she will represent the state at the Miss America pageant later this year. Erin O’Flaherty, 23, was crowned Miss Missouri on Saturday in Mexico, Missouri, and is the first openly gay woman to be named Miss Missouri, said Ann Jolly, chairman of the board of the Miss Missouri Scholarship Organization. O’Flaherty said Wednesday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that she came out as gay when she was 18, competed openly and knew going into the Miss Missouri pageant that she’d be making history if she won. …

Miss Puerto Rico Destiny Velez has been indefinitely suspended by the official Miss America Organization after sending a series of offensive anti-Muslim messages on Twitter. Velez, 20, launched an anti-Muslim tirade at filmmaker Michael Moore on Thursday after he shared a photo of himself outside of Trump Tower in New York City with a sign reading: 'We are all Muslim.' Moore's photo was in response to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US, which inspired the hashtag #WeAreAllMuslim on social media. The former beauty queen sent a number of tweets directed to Moore including...

It’s time to make Miss America Great Again!Last night was the 2016 Miss America contest (the only beauty pageant NOT owned by Donald Trump). It was filled with the usual displays of talent, runway strutting and stupid questions to which there can only be stupid answers. And this year’s contestants did not disappoint. Just like “sort of Marge” in the Essurance commercial, each Miss America wannabe maneuvered the loaded questions with confidence, smiley faces, mixed metaphors, dangling participles and non sequiturs.Beauty queen shares her opinion on healthcare in the America of the U.S.Topics covered every conceivable issue crucial to the...

For the first time since she was crowned Miss America in 1984, Tony-nominated actress Vanessa Williams returns to the Miss America stage, Sept 13. Williams is serving as Head Judge for the "2016 Miss America Competition." She joins host Chris Harrison, co-host Brooke Burke-Charvet, music curator Nick Jonas and celebrity judges Brett Eldredge, Taya Kyle, Danica McKellar, Kevin O'Leary, Amy Purdy and Zendaya. The "Miss America Competition" airs live from Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall Sept. 13 beginning at 9 PM ET on ABC-TV. Fifty-two women compete for the coveted crown and scholarship. -

I am just saying. REELZ is promoting the Miss America pagent, bigtime. Your loss, NBC

Bess Myerson, whose death at age 90 was revealed this week, was a Miss America who lived through nearly a century of change in the perception of "the ideal American woman." She paid for being a celebrity in the way many celebrities before and after her paid with fame and (mis)fortune. She was crowned in 1945, when the Miss America Pageant was taken more seriously than it is today, and she was anything but the typical "queen of femininity." But she was something special in certain ethnic neighborhoods, crowned just days after the bomb wrote finis to World War II...

Actress, philanthropist and former Miss America Mary Ann Mobley died Tuesday morning in Beverly Hills, Calif., after a second battle with breast cancer, one of her daughters has announced in a statement to NBC News. She was 75. Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, Mobley, was crowned Miss America in 1959 and became one of the few Miss Americas to launch a successful TV and movie career. She graduated from "Ole Miss" in 1958 and was the university's first Carrier Scholar and the first woman voted into the Alumni Hall of Fame. In 1962, Mobley made her successful Broadway debut in the...

Just a week into her reign as Miss America 2015, Kira Kazantsev has had to answer questions about a three month internship at Planned Parenthood and getting kicked out of her Hofstra University sorority for abusive hazing. “Under the broad definition of hazing, yes, I was involved,” Kazantsev told "Good Morning America" on Tuesday. “At the time, unfortunately, that was just the culture of the university, and I was hazed, and I was kind of brought up through the organization thinking that is appropriate behavior.” While the story made headlines and forced Kazantsev to explain her actions on national television,...

But Kazantsev was no Miss Congeniality at Hofstra University, where she was expelled from her sorority last year for hazing new recruits. On her resume, Kazantsev lists that she was new member educator and recruitment committee president for the university's chapter of Alpha Phi, a position she reportedly shared with her best friend in the spring term of 2013. A source told Jezebel that Kazantsev and her friend made the pledges' lives 'a living hell' by calling them names, and berating them over physical flaws. The terrifying duo reportedly made the new members perform certain physical tasks to the point...

The Miss America organization is defending newly-crowned Miss America Kira Kazantsev, who LifeNews has exposed as having worked at the Planned Parenthood abortion business and for two pro-abortion politicians. After LifeNews.com exposed her tenure as an intern at America’s biggest abortion business, Kazantsev deleted her LinkedIn profile. The profile revealed that the woman representing the nation as the new Miss America interned for the very organization that has killed millions of Americans in abortions. missamericakirakazantsev5Now, the Miss America Organziation has released a statement defending Kazantsev’s time at the abortion company. In response to the outcry over Kazantsev’s abortion business ties,...

After LifeNews.com exposed her tenure as an intern at America’s biggest abortion business, newly-crowned Miss America Kira Kazantsev deleted her LinkedIn profile. The profile revealed that the woman representing the nation as the new Miss America interned for the very organization that has killed millions of Americans in abortions. Kazantsev, who represented New York state as Miss New York, worked at the Planned Parenthood abortion business — the nation’s biggest abortion company. According to her Linked-In profile (missamericakirakazantsev3shown right), Kazantsev interned at Planned Parenthood in Hempstead, New York. Her job duties at the company that snuffs out of the lives...

You probably know her best as the newly-crowned Miss America or the contestant who belted out the infectious pop tune “happy” as she gleefully tapped on a red solo cup. But here’s something you probably didn’t know about the new Miss America. Kira Kazantsev, who represented New York state as Miss New York, worked at the Planned Parenthood abortion business — the nation’s biggest abortion company. According to her Linked-In profile, Kazantsev interned at Planned Parenthood in Hempstead, New York. Her job duties at the company that snuffs out of the lives of young baby girls? “Assisted delivery of programs...

Normally, there is a pretty clear distinction between the public and private sectors. There also seems to be a pretty clear definition of the energy sector (fuel extraction, refining, power generation). However, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) now seems to think the opposite, the public sector is the private sector and everyone that’s not in the energy sector now is. The DOE will be kicking off an event tomorrow (Wednesday, November 13, 2013) with a forum on Minorities and Energy. This forum is a part of the Minorities in Energy Initiative which “seeks to empower businesses, communities, schools and...

Miss America is back in town. After being exiled to Las Vegas for seven years, the pageant moved home to its birthplace for an end-of-summer carnival of kitsch and kicks, beautiful women romping in the sand and dipping toes in the sea, and showing their gams to the boardwalk empire. That's entertainment -- and it's big business. The founders in 1921 were the Atlantic City Businessmen's League, eager to keep tourists in town for one final week after Labor Day, a fall frolic before cool weather closed the beach and the boardwalk. Newspapers in those days often ran beauty...

There have been many ugly tweets and other nasty comments about the new Miss America, Syracuse, NY born and aspiring cardiologist Nina Davuluri. The former Miss New York is of Indian descent; many of the negative commenters thought she was Arab and/or Muslim. Not so incidentally there were also many positive tweets and comments. Paradoxically, according to Malika Rao writing in The Huffington Post, Davuluri would never have won a similar pageant in her parents' native India because she was too...dark. Yes, even in India, skin color is important--the lighter the better. But there was an unfortunate irony to the...